Aims.This work presents a uniform and homogeneous study of chemical abundances of refractory elements in 101 stars with and 93 without known planetary companions. We carry out an in-depth investigation of the abundances of Si, Ca, Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Co, Ni, Na, Mg and Al. The new comparison sample, spanning the metallicity range -0.70 [Fe/H] 0.50

We present the [ X/H] trends as a function of the elemental condensation temperature TC in 88 planet host stars and in a volume-limited comparison sample of 33 dwarfs without detected planetary companions. We gathered homogeneous abundance results for many volatile and refractory elements spanning a wide range of T_C, from a few dozen to several

We present the results of a spectroscopic study of 37 southern (candidate) γ Doradus stars based on échelle spectra. The observed spectra were cross-correlated with the standard template spectrum of an F0-type star for easier detection of binary and intrinsic variations. We identified 15 objects as spectroscopic binaries, including 7 new ones

We present the first deep, optical, wide-field imaging survey of the young open cluster Collinder 359, complemented by near-infrared follow-up observations. This study is part of a large programme aimed at examining the dependence of the mass function on environment and time. We have surveyed 1.6 square degrees in the cluster, in the I and z

We describe the source subtraction strategy and observations for the extended Very Small Array (VSA), a cosmic microwave background interferometer operating at 33GHz. A total of 453 sources were monitored at 33GHz using a dedicated source subtraction baseline. 131 sources brighter than 20mJy were directly subtracted from the VSA visibility data

We present the emission-line fluxes and kinematics of 48 representative elliptical and lenticular galaxies obtained with our custom-built integral-field spectrograph, SAURON, operating on the William Herschel Telescope. Hβ, [OIII]λλ4959,5007 and [NI]λλ5198,5200 emission lines were measured using a new procedure that simultaneously fits both the